CXLVI: Give Art on Christmas Day 2025

As a compartmentalized task-oriented person, I need to say that this year’s seasonal operations were largely continuations of past Christmases, building on lessons learned in previous years. For starters, the search for a Christmas card cover artwork started early, in fact as early as December 2024, when I contacted a potential artist whose work I had seen in a recent book anthology of Bulacan artists.

Though still relatively young, the artist was fairly well-established in the realist, even photorealist, genre. His growing portfolio, only some parts of which were included in the anthology, demonstrated respectable nods to the great renaissance masters such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

 

As with past Christmas artworks, I asked the artist for studies around the theme of “A Filipino Christmas,” and by February 2025, he had sent me three, namely,

“Airplane Gift”

“Friends Celebrating their First Parol”

“Parol Vendor”

After more than twenty years of commissioned Filipino Christmas artworks, it’s probably inevitable that subjects will start to recur.  Of the three studies, “Airplane Gift” and “Friends Celebrating their First Parol,” to my eyes and mind, reminded me the most of previous Christmas card covers, therefore I asked the artist to progress “Parol Vendor,” in particular. 

Over the March to April 2025 period, the artist diligently sent me updates of how the final artwork was taking shape.

By late April, the painting, while not yet completely finished, was already fairly discernible.

At the beginning of May, the piece had been finished and delivered, and it could then be professionally photographed.

Apart from an early search for a Christmas artist, which allowed the final artwork to be completed by mid-year, another favorable continuity from previous Christmases was the inclusion in our gift bag of the latest Kapitan Tambay collection, now volume 3.

This will allow recipients to check if their political and world views align with my family’s, or at least with the artist’s.

Another continuity, perhaps more predictable, was the 2026 edition of the Ortigas Foundation desk calendar, now featuring views of structures in pre-World War II Manila.

A good exercise for recipients will be to do some desk research to undertake an inventory of which of the twelve places shown still exist, or had been heavily modified or rebuilt due to war damage, or have, sadly, disappeared.

The sole discontinuity this year was the third bag content – the revised edition of “Isang Daang Bagay na Nais kong Isama sa Hukay” by Kyle Gianan, “The Filipino Picker,” the social media-savvy purveyor-dealer of antique and vintage objects and other collectibles.  

Kyle’s book is a faithful compendium of his range of interests and expertise (which differs from my family’s and mine, as his collections involve mainly small, handy objects, whereas ours are mostly large, human-sized, and bulky!). 

The final continuity, to contain all of the above, was the third annual incarnation of our katsa bag, now emblazoned with the logos of both our two house-museums in Malolos (previous versions had the logo of only one or the other).

Everything was accompanied by this year’s Christmas card, with the afore-cited finished artwork on the cover.

Sir-Anthony Y. Mercado

ANG MAGPAPAROL

Oil on canvas

114 cm x 91 cm (45 in x 36 in)

2025

A native of Apalit, Pampanga, Sir-Anthony “Tony” Y. Mercado graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Bulacan State University in Malolos, Bulacan in 2017.  Since then, he has been a finalist or semi-finalist in numerous art competitions, including the Shell National Art Competition, the DPC-PLDT Art Competition, and the Metrobank Art Competition.

A prolific artist in the realist style, Tony has exhibited frequently in solo exhibitions, including at the Ysobel Art Gallery in BGC Taguig in 2019, at the Village Art Gallery at the Alabang Town Center in 2021, in Art Verité in BGC Taguig in 2022, and in Art Cube in Makati in 2024.

Email: mercadosiranthony@gmail.com

Mobile: +63 995 933 8611

And so, from Tony Mercado, Kyle Gianan, Kapitan Tambay (a.k.a. Allan Leycano), and my family and me, 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon!

Originally published on 5 January 2026. All text and photos (except where attributed otherwise) copyright ©2025-2026 Leo D Cloma. The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

CXLIV: GIVE ART ON CHRISTMAS DAY 2023

 In keeping with the growth mindset (a business buzzword that I belatedly and mysteriously only picked up some time in the last five years, it seems), I decided to learn the lessons of 2022, when too many hitches nearly derailed our Christmas undertaking.  I started out early enough, I thought, by focusing on some packaging options, following the mid-2022 demise of our craftsperson of over a decade, Rheeza Hernandez (R.I.P.).  More on this packaging activity later.

The longer critical path, as previous years’ experience had demonstrated, was the identification of the Christmas card cover artwork.  For this, I was prompted to recall another artwork that we had recently acquired, just last December of 2022.  

It was a depiction of the Cenacle, or the room of the Last Supper, before Christ and the Apostles arrive.  At four feet tall by eleven feet wide, and obviously inspired by the famous Leonardo da Vinci fresco for a Milanese monastery, I thought that it was quite interesting and innovative.  The artist Marc Salamat (who had done a previous Christmas artwork for us and several other works since) was the one who told me about this, saying that the artist, a friend and workshop assistant of his, created this upon a prospective client’s commission, when upon its completion, the supposed client could no longer be located.  Without having received a downpayment, the artist was anxious to recover his considerable costs, and I was therefore able to acquire this curious piece at a reasonable price.

In May 2023, I contacted the artist of the Cenacle again, and asked him if he could propose a Filipino Christmas-themed artwork for us.  He eagerly responded, asking only that he be given some time to first complete some in-progress artworks for an upcoming art exhibition.  Soon after, by the following month, he sent me three colorful studies,

a domestic scene with family members setting up Christmas lanterns,

a grandfather offering his Christmas gift,

and a happy gang of kids reveling among presents.

I told the artist that we seemed to prefer the third idea most.  He then got to work, and by October, the finished artwork was ready for sending to the printer.

In the meantime, we had time to finalize the contents of our gift pack.  An easy pick this year was a new volume from Dr. Crispin Maslog, the author of “Never Again! [to Martial Law!]”, that we had included in our 2021 gift pack.  For 2023, Doc Cris has for us “Remember People Power 1986”.

A new author-artist whom I had come across earlier this year was the source of our next pick.  I had met Allan Leycano a.k.a. Kapitan Tambay at the Manila International Book Fair in September, and an anthology-compilation of his cartoons from the 2020 to 2022 period “Kapitan Tambay Book 1”, already nearly sold out during the Book Fair but ready for reprinting (“Remastered”), was another worthy inclusion in the gift pack.

Probably the easiest pick was the always-popular Ortigas Foundation desk calendar, which for 2024 features archival photographs and postcards from the Cordillera People of the early 1900’s.

As to how to package all these items together, we hit on the idea, perhaps rather obvious and even lazy, of a “katsa” cloth bag, 

customized with the logo of one of our private museums, the Museum of the Incarnation.

In what might have been an omen of more hitches, the manufacturer, who already warned me well before that the earliest that they could deliver the finished katsa bags was Thursday December 7th, which I already thought was cutting it too closely, apologetically informed me that they had mistakenly printed the logo on only one side of the bag instead of the agreed two sides.  They could still print it on the other side, but with just the gray text and not the colored portion, and with a further delay.  I agreed, and thankfully all the reprinted bags were still delivered by Sunday December 10th. 

- - - - - 

We now formally introduce our Christmas artist.

Mar Perez

A TIME FOR GIVING

Oil on canvas

40” x 30” / 102 cm x 76 cm

2023

Born in 1985, Mar Perez is a native of Hagonoy, Bulacan.  After attending elementary school in Guinayangan, Quezon, where his father was based, and high school in Hagonoy, he first tended fishponds and worked as a cook in restaurants before becoming the workshop apprentice of his townmate, the artist Marc Salamat, in 2017.  That enabled him to learn and put into practice the technical aspects of art production, which paved the way for him to eventually become an artist in his own right.  Mar is now best known for his colorful artworks that creatively upcycle discarded rubber materials from the production of footwear.  

Instagram: marperez1541

Facebook: mar.perez.355138

TikTok: marperez1541

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And finally, to the printing of the Christmas cards.  While the artwork file was sent to the press in October, soon after the artwork was completed by the artist, and the actual cards finished their printing in November, the procurement of the matching envelopes still had to be undertaken.  “Matching” is the operative word here, because while the press agreed that the cards could be in A5 size, they presumably forgot that those would require C5-sized envelopes, which they belatedly realized were not easy to find in Manila.  

After weeks of frantic searching, apparently all they could find were “catalogue”-sized envelopes, which matches half-US Letter-sized cards, but are a very tight fit at best for A5-sized cards, as this year’s Christmas card recipients will have discovered.  The delay that resulted from the printer’s previous futile C5-sized-envelopes search eliminated the benefit of the early printing of the cards themselves, and in the end, the cards with the ill-fitting envelopes were delivered only on Friday December 8th, leaving barely a week to write out several hundred addressees’ names on both cards and envelopes before they needed to be distributed in the final week before Christmas Day.  

I guess we’ll have to just pray harder to Saint Rheeza in future years.

But as always happens anyway during Christmas, things adjust and work themselves out, or rather we hard-working humans do, and card-and-gift pack delivery schedules were still substantially complied with.  

And so from Mar and all the other sources of this year’s (almost-but-not-delayed) Christmas art and literature showcase, and my family and me,

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon!

Originally published on 2 January 2024.  All text and photos (except where attributed otherwise) copyright ©2024 Leo D Cloma.  The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

CXLIII: GIVE ART ON CHRISTMAS DAY 2022

This past year’s Christmas Day art endeavor was a bit different from previous years’ in that the usual smooth and scheduled process was significantly delayed, and therefore this blog entry too is, by about two weeks.  In fact, the only part that wasn’t was the artwork itself, therefore we should probably talk about that first.

The search for a suitable Christmas artist began early enough, perhaps even slightly earlier than in the past.  By around Holy Week, I had received a strong recommendation to contact a young artist based in Malolos, and by July, I had managed to contact him.  Very quickly, he responded with three studies.  

The first of the three was a rather standard Mother-and-Child, therefore we could easily eliminate it.  The second was an interesting scene of an older gentleman hanging up a Christmas lantern by a window with the help of what might be his young grandson, but without a more complete background story, it might come across as unnecessarily melancholy or too dramatic for the season.  And the third one was a Nativity tableau with a Filipiniana theme.

This last one, while rather spartan and still almost standard, became the springboard for what we eventually chose to do – a Nativity scene in a church mirrored by a small Filipino family opposite it.  

By mid-September, the artwork was fully laid out and ready for rendition.

The warm and rich Christmas-sy red background came first

followed in short order by the Holy Family in their recognizable traditional colors

and soon after that, the human family as well.

In just a few days later, the artwork was complete, and one could already clearly make out Saint Francis of Assisi, the putative inventor of the first Nativity tableau, positioned on the main altar.

- - - - - - - - - - 

As in previous Christmases, most Christmas card recipients would receive a small book pack, which this year consisted of three (very) slim volumes.  First was a quite revelatory treatise, “Trolls for Sale” by Jonathan Corpus Ong.

Next was the follow-up to last year’s very popular book pack entry, Tarantadong Kalbo 3.

The third was a brief but sufficiently comprehensive biography of the greatest Filipino hero of our lifetime, “Benigno Aquino” by Sylvia Mendez Ventura.

This year, most Christmas cards could be accompanied by the reliable and much-sought-after Ortigas Foundation desk calendar for 2023.

- - - - - - - - 

Actually, the Ortigas desk calendar probably wasn’t as reliable as they were in the past, as they only came off the press at the end of November, whereas previously they could be on sale as early as October.  But ultimately this tardiness did not matter, as there were too many other delays on the critical path.

First, we had to switch to a different printing press for the physical Christmas card, as one of the founder-proprietors of the press that we had been using for about fifteen years by now had passed away and the family had decided to close the business for good.  

Unfortunately, I had only known about this business decision rather late in the day, so I had to hurriedly find another press, which, with professional assistance, I managed to do.  But with a change of vendor predictably comes teething pains, including mistakes in font size for the artist note on the back of the card and a wider overall aspect ratio for the finished card due to a different print sheet size versus what the previous press had used.  As a result, the printed card too was delayed in delivery and arrived nearly two weeks later than planned.

The more serious delay was that of the book packaging, and this too was due to a death – of our long-running and truly reliable craftsperson, Rheeza Hernandez of Malolos.  She had been undergoing treatment for cancer, and had received surgery not long before supplying the package design for our 2021 Christmas pack, which was hoped would finally arrest the disease.  Sadly, it was not to be, and that turned out to be the last package that she would ever make for us.  Rheeza passed away in mid-2022, just as I was about to remind her to start thinking of designs for this year’s gift pack.

I had to find other ideas and sources of suitable package designs, and I did find one, though perhaps more pedestrian and less innovative than anything that Rheeza could come up with.  These were mat-woven red-colored and Christmas-ornamented book purses, which were practical enough.

The problems came once the books and calendar were being placed into them, as their zippers would break upon opening and closing.  A frantic repair job on most of the packages resulted in wholesale replacement of the flimsy zippers, which in turn destroyed the mat material of many of the purses, rendering them to be scrapped.  Limited supply of the purses necessitated the use of other package designs, such that there were several different kinds of Christmas packaging this year rather than just one standard one as originally planned, including:

unornamented 

unpainted

freshly-harvested they’re still green

or fancy enough to take to a picnic in the 19th century English countryside.

Some of these replacement packages were delivered to us after Christmas, with the result that we had to dispatch several of the book packs “naked”, i.e., without these bespoke packaging designs and instead in just clear cellophane fastened with packing tape.  The delivery delay also caused some of the packs to be distributed closer to New Year’s Day.

Sorry, Rheeza, I blame you for this disaster.  You are sorely missed.   May you rest in peace.

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In the end, we hope that everyone who was supposed to receive something did, even on a delayed basis.  At minimum, they should have received the Christmas card, with cover artwork by Renz, whom we should turn back to now to formally introduce.

Born in 1996, Renz Cortez Dela Cruz is a licensed mechanical engineer and artist from Paombong, Bulacan, who currently resides in Malolos.  He had been drawing as early as his kindergarten and primary school years, competing in several school-wide poster-making contests, and went on to represent his high school in provincial and regional interschool art competitions.  While an engineering major at the Bulacan State University, he was influenced by peers who were fine arts majors to explore oil as a medium.  Today, he also produces drawings in ink and paintings in watercolor.  

And his artwork:

Renz Cortez Dela Cruz

HALINA SA BELEN!

Oil on Canvas

18” x 24” / 46 cm x 61 cm

2022

“Halina sa Belen!” depicts a scene shortly after early Christmas morning mass, where a small Filipino family, despite their likely eagerness to return home to open gifts, welcome visitors, and share a specially prepared festive meal, takes time out to visit the life-sized Nativity tableau by the church’s main altar and venerate the Christ Child in the manger, watched over by the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph.

And so from Renz and all the other providers of this year’s (mostly delayed) Christmas art and literature showcase, and my family and me,

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon!

Originally published on 14 January 2023.  All text and photos (except where attributed otherwise) copyright ©2023 Leo D Cloma.  The moral right of Leo D Cloma to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.